The Startup CPG Podcast

Janice Greenwald
I will say that I've worked with a lot of founders who have just, like, previously gone straight to an agency or designer and just said, make me a great brand. And they haven't really explained, like, what it is that they're trying to achieve with that project. And so it could be something like, we've had no problem getting on the shelf, but we're having a really hard time getting off the shelf.

00:30
Kat Karpati
I think one of the things that we love to see is really understanding, like, what is the challenge? Like, give us a problem to solve is what we always say. Like, tell us why we have to do this right now versus a year ago. Tell us what's going on in the category. Tell us what's going on with consumers. What's changed that is necessitating us actually doing something?

00:51
Daniel Scharff
Hello again, my friends. Welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. Today's episode goes out to all the people out there who love great branding, because almost all great branding starts at the same place. And that's a great creative brief. That's the document you create. It gets everything that's in your head out onto a piece of paper and over to the people who then bring that branding to life. Today, we're going to open the curtain on that process, tell you what it's like. We've got Janice Greenwald. She comes from the brand side. She's going to tell us all about how to really get it right. And we've also got Cat Carpati from the agency side. So you know, what actually happens when they receive that document, what they do with it. This is a super fun episode.

01:29
Daniel Scharff
We talk all the way through the steps in the process. We talk about missing steps that people make along the way, and tons of tips for getting branding right, making sure it's going to work for your brand in the market. All right, here we go. Enjoy. All right, welcome, everyone, to the podcast. Today we're going to talk about creative briefs. This is how you kick off your branding and design process with an agency. It's really important because a good brief probably gets you a good outcome. And branding agencies especially, really like it when you give them a lot of direction and clarity to help bring your vision to life.

02:06
Daniel Scharff
They probably also like it when they just get a clean slate and get to go nuts and have all the fun that they want to, but that might not align with actually the thing that's in your mind that you really want and all of the things about your product that you know to be true and need to be communicated. So this is what packaging creative briefs are all about. And I'm so happy to have back on the podcast today Janice Greenwald, who is a beloved CMO in our community that guides tons of brands and through this process and is very excited to be here and tell us all about it. And we've also got Kat from Flock Creative, and she's here to give us the agency perspective because I really like to cover both.

02:40
Daniel Scharff
Like, here's what brands need to have ready and when we serve up that nice hot dish of a creative brief to the agency, how are they receiving it? Like, really, you know, what happens once it actually gets there? So we're going to get both of those covered today, but let's start with some intros. Okay. Janice, do you mind going first?

02:57
Janice Greenwald
Sure, no problem. Hey, I'm Janice Greenwald. I'm a fractional CMO for emerging food and beverage brands, and I help brands with everything from brand positioning to market research to shopper marketing. I've helped a number of brands go through brand refreshes or rebrands in my career, so I'm super excited to be talking about this today. And prior to going out of my own, I was on the brand side for nearly 20 years, so always representing the brand. I started my career with large brands, big budgets at Unilever for both food and personal care, and then I started working for smaller and smaller companies. I worked at Sabra for a number of years during like triple rapid growth, triple digit rapid growth years. And then I was leading marketing for startups ranging from about 0 to 50 million.

03:42
Daniel Scharff
All right, so now I'm on my own. Yeah, Janice. Well, you've got us and you're not all on your own. It's really exciting to have Janice here. Probably a lot of you will remember her episode recently, which was how to drive velocity with marketing. And it's one of the most downloaded episodes we've ever had because it really goes into all of the tactics for how to make your product move on shelf from a marketing perspective. We did a sales one, but this was the marketing one and it's a great listen. So if you haven't checked that one out, it's really an all time classic episode of ours. So check that out. And the reason that I love having Janice on here is because if you're in the slack and you see her responding to questions, it's the right answer.

04:22
Daniel Scharff
It's not a lofty marketer who's never been in the business and is just pushing something that they like. It's all of her Answers are so pragmatic and show that she does this for brands and really has learned so intimately what works and doesn't work at different stages of brands. So that's why I love her and also bringing on anyone that she really trusts, which in this case is Kat. So, Kat, your turn. Take it away.

04:48
Kat Karpati
Awesome. Well, thank you for the intro and I too am a big fan of Janice, but I am a the co founder of Flock Creative, a creative branding agency based mostly in San Francisco. And then prior to founding Flock about three years ago, my partner in crime and I led an agency called Hatch in San Francisco for nearly a decade. And so we've done a great job of helping new to the world brands launch, like Julie's Smash Fellow and Sunset. And they were also really great at helping evolve brands and getting them to the next level of growth. So think brands like Alex's Ice Cream, Simple Mills way back in the day. And then most recently some new packaging work for Botchins has just rolled out for us that we think is going to be really successful for them.

05:30
Kat Karpati
We're also really great at helping heritage brands really get a new level of relevancy. So brands like Earthbound Farm and Rao's, of course, which is now a big household name or brands we've worked across over the years.

05:41
Janice Greenwald
Kat, I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I love the Earthbound Farms rebrand. I actually worked in Lettuce for a little while and as soon as that came out, I did not know that was you guys and I was like, wow, Game changing pops on shelf and looks like a real brand now versus a commodity. So props to you.

05:57
Daniel Scharff
All right, cool. So getting into the packaging brief start so you know whether you're a new brand and you've got a big idea and you want to get this out into market or you're an emerging brand or a heritage brand, whatever. And you might be thinking about a refresh, whether it is an overhaul or maybe even just one of these kind of minor refreshes like we have seen all over the Internet lately. Like the kind one that everyone was like, hooray, what did you change? I still can't tell. Right, like a photo hunt game. They're like what's actually different. But whatever it is, you're going to want to have a really good brief and that can involve the maybe it's branding thing elements that you're really trying to get messaging across.

06:36
Daniel Scharff
Or maybe it's actually more of like tactical things that your team really wants to be able to do, to get more into more of a framework. You know, I don't probably that's like the whole cracker barrel fiasco out there. They're trying to get something that was a little. There were some designers who were like, every time I have to put that whole logo in there, can you give me something simpler? Probably there's some of those elements, but can we just start off with Janice, in your mind, what is a packaging brief?

06:56
Janice Greenwald
It's a physical document that you send to an agency. You can come in any form. For me, I just do a Google Doc because I don't love writing decks. But some people like writing deck, so they can do that, but it has to be pretty short, hence brief. So my briefs are usually about two to four pages. And it's basically aligning the business strategy, the marketing, the design, and ultimately with packaging, the packaging production. Like, what the needs are, the mandatories, what's in scope for the project, Putting that all on a page with the ultimate goals to drive both your commercial success and your branding success.

07:28
Daniel Scharff
Okay. And I mean, you heard me talk a lot about it, but you know more than me. So can you give a better explanation of why it's so important? Because I know you're really passionate about this.

07:37
Janice Greenwald
Kat might have a point of view here as well. I will say that I've worked with a lot of founders who have just like previously gone straight to an agency or designer and just said, make me a great brand. And they haven't really explained, like, what it is that they're trying to achieve with that project. And so it could be something like, we've had trouble, We've had no problem getting on the shelf, but we're having a really hard time getting off the shelf. Or maybe there's a new competitive landscape from when you first launched your brand, and now everything is different and you need to stand out in a different way. Or maybe you've updated your key benefits and you need to make sure you communicate those.

08:10
Janice Greenwald
Like, we need to go to the agency with a very clear why as to what we're trying to achieve.

08:15
Kat Karpati
Yeah. And Janice, just to build on that, I think one of the things that we love to see is really understanding, like, what is the challenge? Like, give us a problem to solve is what we always say. Like, tell us why we have to do this right now versus a year ago. Tell us what's going on in like category. Tell us what's going on with consumers. What's changed that is necessitating us actually doing something. One other thing about the brief, other thing it really helps to do is get all the stakeholders on the same page internally because I think that's a really key part. Especially as organizations grow beyond just a founder. It allows everyone to be talking about the same language and achieving the same goals.

08:53
Daniel Scharff
Yes. Sometimes that can be one of the most valuable things is probably if a founder comes to you and you're like, yeah, I need this brief. They're like, oh, okay. I guess we do all really have to align internally about what it is we're doing and what we want. It's so funny, I've worked at brands in the past where it just actually that was just such an important part of it just is really getting everybody internally aligned, which changed a lot of things. Like once you really are forced to write it all down on paper and think of new things and really, you know, face the facts of like, yeah, really, who is our consumer though? And let's just get clear on that and where this thing is actually going to be sold.

09:28
Daniel Scharff
Because it can't just be a beautiful thing that's for everybody and does everything right. So I love that homework up at the beginning. And Kat, when you're talking to brains at the early stage, do you find a lot of them come in knowing this and have a brief? Are they like asking you for a template usually, or do they give you something that's good or kind of half assed? How does it usually go?

09:48
Kat Karpati
It's a mix of everything, of course. We usually have a template that we ask clients to fill out in terms of like a kickoff input so that we can make sure we're getting questions like, okay, what is the business situation that's driving us to have this conversation now? Who's the consumer? What do they think about us? What are key mandatories that we need to do? What's going on in the competitive landscape? What are, what's a hierarchy of communications that we need to make sure that we're delivering on? And then what are the packaging constraints that we need to make sure we're working within as well?

10:15
Daniel Scharff
So that's pretty interesting. And when you're getting all that stuff from a brand, I'm just curious, is there a balance between like getting as much info as you need and sometimes even maybe like getting too much from them, where it actually limits your ability to give them the magic of what you guys have and like more options that they might not have even thought of because. Or do you sometimes just ignore stuff that they're saying. And because you're like, no, I know you're going to like this, though. Even though you said you wanted to be this. Check this out.

10:44
Janice Greenwald
Yes.

10:45
Kat Karpati
And yes. So I would say that we usually like to have as much information as possible. So, like, give us all of the information, all the background information, all the consumer research that you have. Right. We'll parse through it. But it's also really good for us to be able to say, hey, you know, we don't think that's exactly the right approach. We, as an agency typically show clients what they're asking for and then show them what we think they need. Because sometimes clients need to actually see what they think they want before they know they don't want it.

11:09
Janice Greenwald
Yeah. One thing from the client side is I've definitely had worked with people who say, like, can't we make the logo a little bigger? That's an extreme example. Or I want to move this to left. Or I want it to be blue. And that's exactly not the way to approach it. The best. Unless you have, like a color that is your brand's color, the best way is to say what problem you're trying to solve. And so it might be that I'm trying to increase appetite appeal. That does not mean that it has to be a certain way. It doesn't have to be a photo. Like, Kat and her team might have a completely different way to address appetite appeal. So there's. As an example. So there's different ways.

11:43
Janice Greenwald
Or I've worked with brands that have the word crunchy on the copy on the front of pack. And I'm like, well, that's taking up space in your pack. And maybe it could have been solved with photography, but that's not my job. That's their job to solve the problem.

11:54
Daniel Scharff
That's pretty interesting. And I guess immediately, one thing that I wonder is, okay, if you give them something back and let's say it's an instance where they're like, it's not quite right. Is it? Because then they're going to give. Are they then going to give you feedback on how to change it? Or do they actually need to go back then and like, well, why isn't it right? Okay, let me go back to the creative brief that I gave you. And like, maybe actually I need to tweak something here because maybe you're giving me something that does meet this, but actually it doesn't feel right. Why doesn't it feel right? Okay, maybe it's actually like the consumer is not exactly what I said.

12:26
Daniel Scharff
Or maybe there's some elements here that are actually important to me that I didn't realize were so important that I want to communicate. Is that common?

12:33
Kat Karpati
Yes, I would say both cases. Right. Like, you know, our process, we don't nail packaging in round one. Right. So it's a process, and we get feedback and we build on it, and it's a collaborative situation. So there's always going to be rounds of revisions of, you know, I don't like that shade of blue.

12:47
Janice Greenwald
Great.

12:48
Kat Karpati
That's not a brief thing. But if it's like, oh, the consumer thinks something completely differently, then it has to go back to being a brief thing.

12:55
Janice Greenwald
And we're.

12:55
Kat Karpati
If we're not aligned on hierarchy of communications, for example, is a big one that we see often. Let's go back and revisit the brief to make sure we're actually delivering on the right piece of it.

13:04
Daniel Scharff
Okay. That makes sense.

13:05
Janice Greenwald
On the brand side, that's the job of your head of marketing, or maybe the founder who's working with the agency to go back always on the brief and literally check and be like, are we achieving the goals of the brief? Yes or no? Because something could look really good. You might see something that feels really good. You see it your gut, and you're.

13:21
Kat Karpati
Like, that looks really good.

13:21
Janice Greenwald
And then you're like, whoa, whoa. Let me take a step back. I actually needed this to solve a specific problem, and this is not solving that problem. So let's, like, continue to go to the drawing board.

13:30
Daniel Scharff
I love it.

13:31
Kat Karpati
We use that brief continuously as a checkpoint internally as well as the agency side, because that's what we're always benchmarking ourselves to. Are we actually doing what we said we'd do? And that's how we're always evaluating the work internally.

13:43
Daniel Scharff
Okay. So the moment that we're all trying to get to is when you show the client the work and their eyes get wide. They're like, whoa, that is it. And then maybe you start to tweak some stuff, and it's like, whoa. I actually. I love the feeling of seeing it and almost being like is. But that's, like, too cool even. Like, are we cool enough to have that branding? It's so good. So we're all trying to get to that. So maybe. Janice, why don't we step back then, and start from, you know, the moments where you're actually kicking this process off with the brands.

14:12
Daniel Scharff
So I have seen this done by brands in some ways where they're like, let me just Put some stuff in the notepad app on my iPhone as I'm going through my days, and then I'll just, like, send that over. Whereas I know when you're working with brands, it's going to be more structured than that, just to make sure it's actually comprehensive, to get Kat everything that she wants. But can you just tell me a little bit about, like, yeah, generally, what are you trying to make sure is actually covered in there? Should it look like a mood board with a bunch of photos from Pinterest, or what do you really want to make sure is in there?

14:42
Janice Greenwald
It could. I don't actually do that because I'm not very creative, so I don't usually put mood boards in mine. But I'm not saying you couldn't. So Kat actually covered a lot of these things, but I think it's good to be repetitive here.

14:51
Daniel Scharff
This.

14:52
Janice Greenwald
It's going to be things like the brand background. What is the business problem that you're trying to solve? That is the most important thing. Right. What's your positioning statement, like, meaning, like, who is this brand for and what are the benefits? Ultimately, positioning is a whole separate workshop that we could have. Like, who's your target consumer, your real target? Not some large, like, huge target, but who is, like, the person that you want to resonate with. This packaging and everybody else will be a halo to that competitive landscape is absolutely critical. And that could be anybody from, like, if it's food, like, your share of stomach, like, anybody in snacking, it could be, like, anything from a vegetable to a chip. But also, specifically, who's on the shelf with you? Because a good agency is always gonna report back.

15:33
Janice Greenwald
Or they could make a good agency and not do this, but you can make the good agency send their work back in the context of the shelf. That is literally the most important thing. And Kat and I were just talking about this, but there's. I mean, there's founders that literally will take printouts and go to the store and look at it under the light. I mean, it's very important to see how you're gonna appear on the shelf. And then Kat addressed this at things like messaging, hierarchy. And then in terms of the mood boards, it might be, like, brands you admire, things like that. And then finally, it's really. This is where the alignment with the stakeholders is really important, too, is like, what are your mandatories? What are the guardrails? So things like, are we willing to change our logo?

16:08
Janice Greenwald
I mean, if so, like, how extreme. Like, are we willing just to Modify it? Are we willing to fully change it? And then what's the full scope of the project in terms of, like, number of SKUs? Do you need renderings? Do you need cases? Like, do you need full mechanicals? Like, all of those things are going to add to the cost. And so you want to make sure that you're, like, giving them all of the information that they need. I always add when I can. I add all the dielines, everything else just so, like, the agency has the full picture of everything they're going to be working with.

16:35
Daniel Scharff
So just to start out with, you mentioned a couple of times the business problem that you're trying to solve. Can you give some examples of what those could be for a couple of different brands? Just so people are like, okay, yeah, that's what that actually means.

16:47
Kat Karpati
Sure.

16:47
Janice Greenwald
Kat, do you want to give one or I can.

16:49
Kat Karpati
I got lots of ideas. So a couple could be, hey, we're having a hard time getting into retail. We're D2C right now, and Amazon, we're really trying to get into mass retailers to help us figure out how to, like, really get a package that stands out on shelf, which is very different than having a D2C ratio package. It could be, hey, we've got really great product awareness, but nobody knows our brand name, and we're trying to expand into other categories. We did that with Nature's Bakery back in the day. Everyone kept calling them the fig bar brand, which is great, but when you want to go past Fig bars, you need to be named something else. So really building equity is another great example.

17:23
Kat Karpati
It could be Appetite appeal is another great one where people are familiar with you but not necessarily picking you up because it doesn't look like it's going.

17:29
Janice Greenwald
To taste as good and going on. Like, when I first joined Rhythm Superfoods, were very, very natural, like hippie dippy. And were entering. Trying to enter conventional, so we needed to. And were building a whole new category with kale chips. So we had a lot of work to do there. To take ourselves from being in, like, the infras of the world to going to places like Wegman and ultimately Kroger and places like that. That's an example. And then another example that I gave my podcast, which I actually like reminded me when Cass just spoke about it, is sometimes you can get into retail with really amazing packaging, which doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get off the shelf. And we had that problem with one of the brands I worked on, which it had amazing packaging.

18:07
Janice Greenwald
But it wasn't communicating really what was inside the product. So people, buyers loved the packaging and it had no problem hitting the shelf. But then it, like once it was there, really consumers had no idea what this product was and it needed more explanation. So we didn't want to lose the essence of the amazing branding, but we wanted to bring forth some of the kind of key benefits for the consumers that makes sense.

18:27
Daniel Scharff
And yeah, I was just thinking about if you look at like the beverage set at Erewhon, for example, and it's just a sea of unicorn beverages, you know, just all so different and colorful and all these different claims and craziness and it's, I just was thinking about how you have stuff that can work there that also may not work in other places because I think their consumers come in with that mindset of just endless discovery, immense, beautiful, joyful discovery and spend time really reading things and looking things over. But that may not be the thing that it takes to get somebody to grab that off the shelf at Safeway.

19:06
Janice Greenwald
When they're, I mean it's completely different. Like Costco, for example, they don't believe in brands, they believe in products. Right. And so if you're presenting, let's say your channel strategy is to go to Costco first, you're probably, I don't know, Kat might disagree with me, but you're probably going to bring down the brand. And then there's this whole rule about being able to read it from five feet away. And there's a whole different like kind of elements that you need to build into this for Costco. And that actually reminds me in the brief, it's really helpful I think too if there are specific constraints, that shelf, so Costco has that 5ft away thing. But also like if you're in a freezer section and you're behind a door, that's like very important information.

19:42
Janice Greenwald
Or if you're on a chip shelf and there's a lip, like I put that we always say like we have to design above the lip or all the key claims have to be above the lip, like your organic logo, if it's hidden or the way that your bag dieline is going to be, if those bottom things aren't going to work out or they're going to get smushed on top, you have to make sure that your panel that's actually going to be front facing is facing all being covered. Another example that always driving me crazy. When I worked on a beverage, we had a six pack and the agency always designed for the long Side which was like beautiful. But I knew it wasn't going to be merchandised that way ever.

20:19
Janice Greenwald
I knew it was always gonna be the four side, like the four cans or the toucans, I guess. And we didn't have like a good dieline. Cause it had like the flap or whatever. But I was like, I don't care. Like, this is what we need to show and this is gonna be our hero side. So, like show only. Show me that. Like, I don't even want to see the side in the beginning.

20:37
Kat Karpati
So, Janice, what you're bringing up and is like not necessarily included in the actual brief, but as part of the briefing process is doing the store shops and actually physically going and looking at how these brands show up and how the competition shows up. Because each store is so different and the competitive landscape ends up being so drastically different. When you're looking at the Costco pack versus, you know, something that's going to sit on. On whole food shelves.

21:00
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, just being in the store so important to just very much familiarize yourself with the set. Whether it's your company or you are hired into the company, whatever it is just, you know, I think it's so important to completely immerse yourself in the category. And maybe it's not even one that you personally eat or drink all the time, but when you're there, try to, if you can stomach it, get in there, try the competition, really get familiar with their products and try to understand what people like about those get. Just get used to seeing it, see it in different environments, different kinds of stores. Convenience, natural. And I think what you were saying. Yeah, it really starts even, I mean, to do the creative brief effectively.

21:38
Daniel Scharff
You also hopefully have a good idea of what your channel strategy is because the shelves look really different at a place like Erewhon or a place like Whole Foods or a place like Safeway or Costco. And I mean, hopefully good packaging and once you build the brand, it can perform in all of those places and everywhere in between. But, you know, I think just really good to consider strongly the places that you think are going to be most important to you. Deliver tons of your volume, anchor you as you keep growing. Especially in the early years though, because you also can update things as you go along. But whatever your launch strategy is, let's, you know, hope that your product is designed to do well in those shells.

22:16
Daniel Scharff
And I did exactly what you're talking about, Janice, where when we got designs, I printed them on my inkjet printer or whatever and like wrapped it around a package of a competitor because we didn't have our own products yet and then went to a store and was just putting it on the shelf and looking at it. And even that I feel like is, you know, Janice, you said you're not so creative. I'm not so creative. Like you're. Hopefully you're more creative than I am. It's so hard for me to envision something that I'm just that someone's describing or I just, like, I need to see it to actually know.

22:45
Janice Greenwald
That's why I don't tell the creatives what to do. I mean, I'm like really desperate. If I'm telling a creative on a design, I'm in a desperate situation. Just one more thing on the shelf set. Like, because I see this all the time when an agency presents back and they put like all six of your SKUs and they have equal amount of facings as every other competitor. Like, let's be a little bit honest. Like, sure. Like, sure, the agency might do that for you, but on the side, maybe you make your own shelf set that's a little more realistic. It might even be a photo of an actual shelf set where there's 65 facings of Doritos. And then you're going to have like just two of your SKUs are probably going to get in and. Well, what's that going to look like?

23:25
Janice Greenwald
Do you need it to be a brand block? Do you need it? Do you want different colors? Like you think that's right now? It's very hot right now to have different colors, right? But like you're not necessarily going to get your full rainbow. So you have to consider all of those things and consider that you're going to get these top two skus into. Those two skus look good in the context of the whole shelf. Are they going to pop? So those are all just like very important things and actually photos of the shelf set. I didn't put it in my brief. I don't always put it in my brief, but it should be in my briefing document.

23:50
Daniel Scharff
It's pretty interesting. Also, I mean, it seems like there are trends of these things like that flow over time about, oh, a movement towards more minimalist kinds of packaging in order to stand out or there's lots of color or maybe go against the grain for a while and you know, depending on what you're trying to convey about your product and what the set is looking like and what's in the zeitgeist, consumers minds what's going on. But I also, I've heard interesting theories about the use of color on packaging. And, yeah, I am not the person who knows the most about it. Honestly, I'm lucky if I can even tell you if I like something or don't. Just like, okay, let's. Yeah, okay, let's go with that.

24:25
Daniel Scharff
But, you know, it's been explained to me before that it actually is hard for a brand to own over a certain number of colors. And I don't. I don't know if it's true or not, but people have said it's very expensive. If you're trying to have, for example, really different colors on each of your skus, because that's a hard thing to then teach consumers to associate all of those things with your brand for them to be able to, you know, then look across all of them, be like, yes, that is all part of this one brand that I like. Even if you wish for them to know all the things that you know about the brand and delineate them the way that you do in your mind, it can be tricky, right?

24:59
Daniel Scharff
I don't know, Kat, do you have any view on that about, like, how far you can go with different skus? And I thought of it just because Janice is saying, like, how the agency is going to be like, yes, look at this. And if you have three facings for all of your 10 SKUs, it's going to look like this. Yeah, that's not going to happen. You might have one facing on two of your SKUs there. So what do you think, Kat?

25:16
Kat Karpati
Yeah, I think it's always a question in our heads, right. Of, okay, usually the color strategy has to do with flavor and how much you want to, like, lean into, like, flavor distinction, especially when we're talking about food. Right. But even if we're doing that and doing a packaging that has drastically different colors, you need to figure out how to create that brand block. So going back to Nature's Bakery in that crowded bar set, right, Everyone had a color. Nature's Value, own green, kind and black. Us having a rainbow of colors was differentiating, but we had a really strong masthead, right? So starting to create some graphic devices that bring consistency across the packs becomes really important. Crave is another great example.

25:53
Kat Karpati
Crave jerky, right, Has a lot of bright colors involved in it, but it has a very strong central grounding element that then provides some element of unity. And so I think if you're going to go a color strategy where you are leaning into owning flavor, you just need to make sure that you have another design element on pack that really grounds that and unifies the portfolio. And then I think we also often lean into having a master brand color when we do something that's so vibrant. Right. And so it's like when we're thinking off pack, how does that look? Right. Because you're not always leaning into a flavor. So how do we, like, lean into one of those individual colors so that it elevates to a master brand level?

26:34
Daniel Scharff
Okay, perfect. So I want to get into just some of the specifics of the actual creative brief. So I know one of the key elements, for example, is a positioning statement. Can you take me through? Janice, let's start with you on just, you know, what's a good one, what's a bad one? Like, how do you actually make sure it's going to be reasonable, interpreted well by the agency? How do you really come up with something like that?

26:57
Janice Greenwald
There's a methodology for positioning. So believe it or not, there is like a formula for it that people spend a lot of money and some people spend tens of thousands of dollars just to work on their positioning statement. But it's basically a few lines that explains what the brand is like, who the brand is for, why it matters, like its place in the category and the unique point of difference, as well as the functional and emotional benefits. And there's a literal formula for it. And I have an example in my notes, if you want me to.

27:30
Daniel Scharff
Let's do it. Yeah, Maybe you could give us, you could read out a good example of that so we can hear what it's saying.

27:36
Janice Greenwald
I don't want to say it's like the best positioning statement ever, but I will give an example that I have permission from a client to share, which is El Nacho. So it's for families who want bold flavor, better ingredients, and a snack that brings joy to everyone at the table. El Nacho is the chef crafted snack brand that combines elevated, rebellious flavors with clean ingredients and a luchador spirit to deliver fun flavor and connection in every bite. Unlike conventional snack brands that play it safe with bland flavors or compromise on quality, El Nacho is proudly bold and built to stand out. The flavor that punches, a story that sticks and a story that sticks.

28:19
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so, and I, I love El Nacho, which, you know, if anyone hasn't had it, you should have it. It's so good. It's like a better for you version of Doritos. But it tastes real. You know, you can actually buy actual chefs. Yes. Like the corn tastes like corn, but it also has all of that amazing flavor that. I mean, I do like Doritos, too, but these are better.

28:44
Janice Greenwald
Nobody knows this, but we use white corn. Yeah. So El Nacho pitch there.

28:47
Daniel Scharff
It's fan. It's fantastic. It's a truly incredible product. Now, that's a great positioning statement, I guess. Just, I have one, you know, bone to pick with it, which is you started by saying it's for families, and I'm on my own here, and I want it. And I want it to be marketed to me because I love it so much. But that's interesting to hear that. I mean. Okay. Yeah. So they're marking it, I guess, toward a family angle, which I don't know how that actually eventually then translated into the packaging, which is cool, too. But can you tell me a little bit more about that?

29:17
Janice Greenwald
We backed into it a little bit because the packaging was our. The theme of the packaging was already designed by our amazing creative director, Ryan, before. Like, we kind of went back and worked through some of the positioning elements to sort of take the brand to the next level. But for that brand, like, again, like, it could be for anybody, you know, any. And we want it to be for anybody, but we also know that we want it. We wanted the kids to really resonate with the product because, like, the luchador characters and whatnot, like, a lot of kids really love. Like, this isn't a product, like, meant for wrestlers. I mean, of course, like, we have some mega Wrestler fans out there. We totally do. But we knew what we wanted it to be for, like, both the parents and the kids.

29:57
Daniel Scharff
I got you. It's a good time. Yeah. I mean, if you think about who's eating Doritos, that makes more sense to me now. Although now that there is a better for you version of it, then maybe that will expand to people like me who probably feel like, oh, I can't be seen feeding dirty.

30:11
Janice Greenwald
It's always going to be the Halo target, too. Like, I'm working with a brand right now who gave me, like, six targets, and I was like, I get it. But we have to pick one that we want to. It's not just what you're designing for, it's what you're innovating for. Like, what does your future look like for everything that you're doing when you have one target in mind? It's a little bit easier to do that than if you're trying to do, like, be something for everybody.

30:32
Daniel Scharff
It's funny. And I also. It just kind of makes me wonder when people have a Product like that, Like a, you know, big bag of chips or an individual size bag of chips. What? Yeah. What's the consumption occasion for them? For me, it feels like a personal thing. Like I'm getting that bag of chips and I'm probably eating it by myself. There are occasions where you would share it with people, especially if it's El Nacho and you want everyone to try it. But in a lot of instances, I'm just like having lunch, sitting somewhere, having that, or just like having a snack in front of the tv, something like that. So it just kind of makes me interested to hear that part. And it also ties into another question that I have, which is how do you determine who the target consumer is? Right.

31:07
Daniel Scharff
Because like, okay, it can often. It shouldn't be everyone. No, it's for everybody. Like, that's not, you know, that's always a red flag. But how do you know when you're picking a target consumer then? Is it too broad? Is it too narrow? Like, you don't want people to think that you don't have much of an addressable market. But it, you know, you can't be for everyone.

31:27
Janice Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, I think your addressable market is different than your target consumer because there is going to be a halo. So I wouldn't be too concerned there. I mean, a lot of it I think is just like in the early days, talking to people and seeing like, who this is resonating with and who do you like, think you want to design this product for? It's not necessarily who's actually, like, let's say you've already launched. It's not necessarily even who's currently consuming it. It's who do you want to be consuming it? Who's your aspirational consumer? Like, sometimes you're going to have. Your consumer base is not actually aligned with how you develop the brand to because it's aspirational. So, like, it might be like Young Gen Z, but really like millennial moms or whatever are the ones consuming it.

32:06
Janice Greenwald
But they're so still like, enjoying the Instagram of like, you know, they're wishing that they were that in that phase of their life or whatever. So it, I mean, it's really hard. But I mean, honing in is very important into both, like, demographics, psychographics, like every single thing about that consumer. I always write, like a Persona, like, try to really understand, like, who is this person and what is her mindset, what other brands resonate with her so that, like, you can kind of picture, like, what's in her basket. But also like, what does her life look like? Look like, is she listening to NPR or is she listening to Joe Rogan? Like, these things are going to be very different.

32:38
Kat Karpati
So Jenna, just to build on that, like the psychographic piece, I think is so important, right? Because brands tend to get so hung up on, okay, are we, who are we for from an age and demographic standpoint. But the psychographic piece is like what ends up inspiring something unique in the packaging. So even with the El Nacho example that you just gave, right, you said for families. But it's that who want bold flavor. So it's like those bold flavor seekers that then start to give us something that we can like lean into creatively. So that becomes like a little bit more of a hook. So it's not just like the rational piece of it, but it's much more the emotional piece.

33:12
Daniel Scharff
And there, I mean, there are data based ways to try to figure this out too. Because, yeah, you're not going to know in most instances unless you're like, no, I am a runner and I built this product to fit into my life. And this product is for runners who don't get access to this. Like, okay, you might have a pretty tight story there, but in a lot of instances, you know, you might just be targeting particular category and you can start and you can look at data about who actually purchases that category. Right. It's out there. You can find some free sources that's on places like Statista or just Google searches and understand, like, who buys this? What's the purchase frequency? Like, you know, household size? Like, you can get some of that stuff out there.

33:49
Daniel Scharff
One thing that I did in the past then was even to run a white label kind of survey just to understand, okay, I know who buys this category. Great. I can ask a bunch of questions on an online survey about like, why do you buy it? What are the things you care the most about? And you actually learn some pretty interesting things. Even like I, I just remember when I was looking at the energy category, even understanding, like why people buy something like Red Bull, a lot of them don't know it has caffeine, which is so interesting. They're just like, you know, like energy, like, where does the energy come from? I like sugar. I don't really know. Is it just stuff that you wouldn't really put together? So I like doing that. The white label survey.

34:26
Daniel Scharff
Then I would like, we didn't have the packaging, obviously. This was to create the packaging and understand it. We would just run kind of a, like, Blank can almost. But just put some of the general idea and then understand who says that they would purchase that? Like, okay, how are they different and why would they buy this? And what do they feel like is missing and who's most likely to. That was pretty helpful for me. But then also just really talking to people and doing interviews with people that I know are heavy consumers of the products. And, like, what do they like and what do they think about the different products? And then being in the store and just looking at people, if they pick something up, like, hey, why'd you buy that? You know, it's a little.

35:01
Daniel Scharff
A little creepy, but hopefully you can do it in a way that's not too creepy. But just like, seeing people interact with the set, seeing how much they purchase it, what time of day are they purchasing it, who is the person that purchases it? Is it for them? Is it for family? What do you think, Janice? I know you stalked some shoppers.

35:15
Janice Greenwald
Well, I've definitely done shopper intercepts before. Sure thing. No, I mean, I agree with all of that. I think the hardest part with, like, quantitative surveys, which I love to do, is finding, like, you have to ask the questions to the right people. And then so to your point, like, who are those right people? And that's the hardest part, because if you ask a bunch of questions about, like, to your existing D2C audience of a hundred people or something like that, like, you're just talking to yourself. But if you're looking for a broader audience and doing it to gen pop, to try to learn, like, who are those people, like, demographically and then psychographically, like, there are a lot of research that you could do there, like, statements that people agree with, like, I, you know, look for organic foods or whatever.

35:52
Janice Greenwald
So there's a lot of different ways to get to, like, more of a quantitative look at it. But a lot of it is, I think, in these early days is just like having talked to a lot of people and being like, there is a white space in the market for a product like this, for this person.

36:06
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I think that's totally right. I wonder, Kat, when you're getting these briefs sent to you, how. How much data do you actually usually see in there? Is it all intuitive? Are there people who are just dumping data your way?

36:16
Kat Karpati
It's a mix of both. It just. Honestly, it depends on, like, client size and sort of, like, client marketing background. Sometimes it's simply gut and reading Amazon reviews or reviews online of, like, okay, who's buying it? What. What seems to be working what's going on with the competitors and who's buying those? What's not working there? Like that sometimes is the amount of information we get. Other times it's like bigger companies that have spent the money to do like bigger studies and have really clear ideas of who primary target is versus secondary target and done the whole.

36:48
Janice Greenwald
I mean that's, we're not getting into that here. But it's like literally which consumer segment is purchasing for which day part. I mean there's a lot you can do that we can obviously are not diving into here. But that quite literally like could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's why I kind of said it's a little bit of gut in the beginning.

37:05
Daniel Scharff
So, yeah, there is, there are a lot of ways you could spend money as an early brand. I'd say some of them wise, some of them not wise. At some point you just need to get the product out of the market because you're going to learn things along the way. And yeah, all those big brands with their big money, they miss an awful lot of the time, especially when they're trying to do something innovative. I feel like sometimes those things you can kind of get to innovation by committee at a big brand, which is a great way to kill something that could be cool, right? So, yeah, I really appreciate a data driven approach when you can muster it at least like looking at what's out there, trying to understand it. But yes, you will not always be successful as we know.

37:42
Janice Greenwald
Design by committee is also a thing that happens a lot among the clients. And I really just urge people to try to avoid going back to your agency with this is the answer that we want. Again, I'm going to say this again. Go back and tell them about the problem that you are seeing and really try to avoid telling them how to fix it. I mean, if you have like a true belief, share it, sure. But like let them try to show you how they might approach it.

38:09
Daniel Scharff
And so you mentioned guardrails earlier and that's. I think it's a good one to ask you about Cat also because you may come in and say, okay, we're good, we're going to have guardrails. All right. It's like has to do this or the like, we actually have the logo already and it must include this logo. And that's kind of the premise for it. But I've also worked with great agencies that ignored that. And then like I was mentioning before, gave us something that was so much better. We're like, well, I guess that's not really a guardrail after all, or it shouldn't have been. And I bet when you have that whole committee doing things, you get a lot of guardrails. That a smart agency is going to know what. What really is a guardrail versus where they should push back a little bit.

38:42
Daniel Scharff
Kat, what do you think?

38:43
Kat Karpati
Yeah, for sure. I think that's a great point. What we usually like to have clients answer is, on a scale of 1 to 10, how far are we changing? Right? Like, one is like a tiny zhuzh and like, 10, obviously being like, a whole new brand. And that starts to give us, like, a sense of, like, their appetite for change, which also helps versus telling us exactly what needs to change. And then we often do for established brands, an equity audit, which we then evaluate the positioning because usually there's been a positioning change from, like, the last time they've done a packaging or refresh. Evaluate the positioning against their current equities and figure out which ones are actually delivering on it.

39:16
Janice Greenwald
And maybe the logo works, but maybe.

39:18
Kat Karpati
It can be evolved. And so that is a better way for an agency and sort of a client to tackle equities versus just mandating. Okay, this has to stay the same.

39:28
Daniel Scharff
All right. Okay. Another one for you, Janice. You got to put in what the competitive set is, right? And I think, like, I don't know, probably every early brand is. I'm going to take all the big guys. You know, let me go. And here my competition is Unilever or Kellogg's or whoever. But then, like, there are also early brands you might think are interesting and like, well, I'll put that in there, but I don't know what's their distribution even? How do you really pick an effective competitive set to list that into your creative brief?

39:51
Janice Greenwald
I put everybody in because I think that there's. I said it's on the podcast, but I feel like there's a dark horse, like, always somebody that you don't realize who's coming up right. Right behind you. But at the end of the day, when you're looking at the shelf set and you're, like, deciding, I would probably choose this, it can go back to your channel strategy, like, what's the key couple of retailers, and what does that shelf look like? So if it's Whole Foods or if it's Kroger, it's gonna be pretty different, Right? So I would make sure that those are the brands that you're probably focusing on the most ultimately.

40:18
Daniel Scharff
Okay, cool. So next one, maybe. Kat, this is a good one for you as a brand, especially once you get the product developed and you got the formulation, you're like, look, these 20 things are true about our product and I want everyone to know all of them because it is gut healthy and also makes you good at sports and also is non GMO and gluten free. And also, oh, well, like, we should tell the vegans that it's vegan. And also, you know, the like Nascar like car approach where you see all the logos on there and that's the thing you want to avoid, right? Because it's very hard for people to process that much information, especially, you know, from five feet or whatever.

40:53
Daniel Scharff
So how do you work with people, Kat, on kind of like prioritizing the messaging that they really need to get across?

41:00
Kat Karpati
Yeah, we see that often. And one of the things we always say is, you know, three claims. Consumers have appetite and understanding of, like three things. Front of pack. And the front of pack is really meant to be a beacon that sort of like pull you in and so it doesn't have to do everything. You just really want the consumer to like, see you and then ideally pick you up. And oftentimes clients forget that there's like a whole entire rest of a pack. Right. That you can use to help communicate some of the other key points that is really important to tell a brand. So we often, you know, especially with smaller clients, look at the big guys. Okay, what are the big guys saying on shelf? Right? What are the points of parity that we need to make sure that we're communicating?

41:37
Kat Karpati
Maybe this whole category does need to have a protein claim, right? Probably these days. And then maybe low sugar is the other one, but maybe there's something else that makes us different and we just try to focus in on, okay, what are those three things? Two usually being points of parity to make sure we're at least being competitive on shelf, and then one being a differentiator that hopefully gets enough attention to get people to pick it up and look at the rest of it.

42:00
Daniel Scharff
I love that. And I feel like especially without that prioritization, I've seen a lot of examples of products where a brand will show me their packaging and I look at, they're like, and look at this. And look at this. I'm like, okay. I mean, one question I have is, what is this? I look at this product, I don't know what it is, and I'm not even sure if I saw it in the context of a shelf, if I would know what it is. Like, I need to have some kind of understanding and expectation of the product to take a chance on it. Right. Because snacks are delicious, drinks are delicious. You know, you don't going to. Into a store expecting to buy a bunch and drink a bunch at the same time, like, you're placing a bet.

42:31
Daniel Scharff
That can be risky for, you know, your. Your stomach that day. So how do you make sure you really, in the end, communicate or like, you know, how do you prioritize that? Just like a clear understanding versus all of the fancy stuff they want to do.

42:42
Janice Greenwald
Yeah.

42:43
Kat Karpati
Usually in our minds, it's most cases, Costco possibly aside. Right. It's brand first so that people understand, like, what your brand is, and then like, who, what are you? And those are the two main things that we need to communicate. Then the rest of those things become reasons to believe whatever it is that we're trying to. To say what we are.

42:59
Janice Greenwald
I just want to add to that because I've worked in a lot of new categories. So when I was working at Rhythm Superfoods, were like, early to market or first to market with kale chips. And were pretty focused on, like, making sure people knew that it was kale chips, because kale chips were sort of coming up, and kale was really popular at the time. And so we actually, and this is something that you put into your brief, said that we wanted it to be 50 hierarchy between category and brand, and then flavor coming below that. So for us, it was like pulling the category out since were an unknown entity as a brand. Like, people weren't going to say stop for rhythm, but they might stop for kale chips. So that was important to us as well.

43:36
Daniel Scharff
Okay, cool.

43:37
Kat Karpati
Just to build on that. We usually see that as like some sort of completely new to the world type of product. Right. Leans in on what the product is first. Bachan's Japanese Barbecue Sauce. Right. Like we're a Japanese barbecue sauce. And then eventually, as people get more familiar with it's like, okay, let's make sure we establish ourselves as the Japanese barbecue sauce and. And make sure Botchins is really clear.

43:57
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, exactly. Because then I've seen other brands come in places like that, and they're like, no one knows the name of that company. We can do another Japanese barbecue sauce. Thank you very much for all of the awareness of the category of products. Now I'll come in with mine. So it is good to maybe even switch that balance over time in some instances. I've seen brands doing that lately. Okay, so just a couple more. Let's Say more tactical questions here on the brief now. So the, like, scope of it or exactly what you're asking the deliverables to be? I mean, Janice, what are you looking for?

44:26
Daniel Scharff
For from people like, hey, you know, because there's obviously, there's the logo, then there's full pack, then there's like, oh, I bet also how it's going to show up on the outer packaging and all this other stuff. What are you typically trying to scope the brief for?

44:38
Janice Greenwald
I mean, it totally depends, excuse me, on what the client needs, but let's say it's a brand refresh. I'm going to figure out, like, what SKUs. Are we having the agency design all of the skus, or do you want them to do the lead skus and then put the rest of it to a freelancer? So how many likes to skus are we, like, starting from scratch with a new logo? All of those things. So are we looking for a full brand refresh? You have to explain all that up front. Right? But then it's down to, like, what SKUs. Do you need packaging, mechanicals? Do you need renderings? Do you need a case designed? I mean, it's very, like, specific in terms of what you want to ask for so that it's clear. Like, do you need your renderings, front end backup pack?

45:14
Janice Greenwald
Do you need multiple angles? Like, you just want to make sure that whatever you're putting in is very crystal clear. Clear. Also, like, form factor. Like, are there limitations with the form factor in terms of, like, if you have any information about your printer so that you can explain what the type of printing is going to be as well, and those are questions that they'll ask you later on. The agency will always ask you and hopefully maybe ask you early on. But for example, like, if you're working in Beverage, are you printing on the can or are you printing on a sleeve? Like, these things are going to be very different in terms of how the agency might approach it. When I worked on Beverage, I only wanted to work and I was working on a rebrand.

45:48
Janice Greenwald
Like, one of my mandatories with selecting an agency was an agency that had printed on cans before. Because I was like, just not. I was new to it and I wasn't confident in, like, what the colors were going to be and how that was all going to work out. And I wanted to make sure the agency had a really good, like, grasp of that.

46:02
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, that's important. I've been hit with the business end of that one before. We're just like, yeah, Somebody who I think didn't have as much experience, gave us a recommendation and something looked horrible. Often that's why you want to go.

46:14
Janice Greenwald
To a packaging agency too. And not just a graphic designer. If it's a graphic designer, if they've had a lot of experience in packaging, that's fine. But I mean, people who really understand like the details of packaging and what, like what, how it's going to show up on different substrates and all of those things.

46:29
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, okay. Okay, another one here. As in, you know, there's this quote unquote RFP process, Right. And if you're one of these big companies, you're probably very comfortable doing that. Like, okay, we're going to revamp this product brand. Here's our creative brief, and I'm going to send this out to the top 10 design firms out there. And you guys are all competing for our business. So, you know, you better come correct. As an early brand, I would feel like I can't do that at all. We'd be super lucky for one great agency to want to work with us. So what do you think is really fair, appropriate for, let's say, an emerging brand to how they can actually run that process? Like, can you send, is it, can you confidently do it? Like, look, here's what we need.

47:08
Daniel Scharff
Give us your best and give us some ideas. How much can you even expect to get from them? Like, obviously they can't just give you a fully baked design and branding for that rfp, but they can give you some ideas. Can you guys tell me a little bit about how this process starts? Maybe Janice and then Kat, how you guys typically respond to stuff like that and what you feel like is fair.

47:26
Janice Greenwald
I want to address the taking you seriously part. So when I don't know if other people do it this way, but when I do my rfp, I'm including the brief. So that is my rfp kind of. And that's so that the agency takes me seriously because I want to show them, like, I'm not messing around. Like, we are a brand. If we're going to go and spend like agency level money, like 50 to $300,000, then I want to make sure that they know that this is serious and we're taking the process seriously and we're not wasting their time. So that is the reason that I spend all this time up front so that the agency will be interested in our brand and our product.

48:01
Janice Greenwald
Because an agency like Flock doesn't have to say yes to everybody because they have plenty of work and so I mean some of the agencies, like I have agencies where I have to like stalk the founder and be like, hey, did you see my note? Like, because they're just busy. And so that's the first part I wanted to address in terms of what you can expect when you work at a big company, like a Unilever or something. Like people pitch you full ideas. I don't know about packaging per se, but like in creative, like they literally, that's their job is to pitch you full ideas. That is not what you're going to get as a startup. So what I look for is like some level of interest. So when they come back to me, first of all, like expressing interest in working with us.

48:40
Janice Greenwald
And then when they do the proposal, I put like a time frame, like, please submit the proposal within this time. Most agencies will ask for a meeting, which is a good sign. It means that they're actually interested in learning more. I hope that they've read my brief so that they're asking questions relevant to the brief and not just rehashing all the things I already put into the brief, which was very thorough. And then they'll probably send back a deck with their capabilities, relevant examples. And then I think that's where you start to see like maybe people who are a little more interested if they start giving a little bit more like thought about your current brand. But I wouldn't expect like ideas or anything like that out of the gate.

49:17
Daniel Scharff
Okay, Kat, what does it feel like when that stuff comes to you and how willing are you to submit just some information, fully baked ideas? How do you think about it?

49:27
Kat Karpati
Yeah, so we love RFPs and we love having conversations. Pretty much every single time an RFP comes in, I ask for a phone call so we can have a conversation with the client about what is actually going on. Because there's so much that you can get that doesn't come across on that piece of paper. Plus, I think part of the success of brands that we've worked on is the relationship piece. Right. And so there are those intangible factors of like, okay, how well can you guys communicate with each other? How well do you get along? Do you guys get each other's vibe? Like, that's a big important piece for us as well.

49:58
Kat Karpati
When we're evaluating whether or not we want to participate in an RFP and then in terms of like what we actually deliver, we'll always deliver a capes and an approach to how we will solve the problem for a client. We don't do spec work it's not. We don't think that evaluating an agency based on work that they've turned around in like a two week process is ever going to get you the best results. The best way to evaluate an agency is past work that they've done where they've had that back and forth, that relationship and that process with a client. And so we often do, you know, you made us think and it's like considerations that we've seen by evaluating the category or things that get us excited about the brand.

50:35
Kat Karpati
So we'll start to give some thought into like where we could go and just to show some excitement and some of the behind the scenes what's actually going on. But we almost never present actual design work in an RFP process.

50:48
Daniel Scharff
So then the brand's going to be looking at, okay, how do they think about our brand? Because you probably give some of that info. What's the stuff that they've delivered before? And do I just. Do I really agree with the approach that they're talking about? Does it feel like they get us and me and they'd be excited to work on this with us and vice versa?

51:06
Kat Karpati
I think that's exactly it.

51:07
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. I mean, is that. And Janice, is that how you would recommend a brand evaluates the responses to RFPs that come.

51:15
Janice Greenwald
A lot of it is chemistry. A lot of it is going to be chemistry. I have like a rubric that I use or I try to use to. Again, this goes back to the alignment part of like, okay guys, like that was amazing chemistry. But maybe the team hasn't solved this problem for other brands before. And this agency, like we liked the people, you know, but they've solved this problem like 10 times, you know, and so that's why having some sort of evaluation kind of rubric is helpful. But certainly like agency like founder fit, like the chemistry is number one. I'll often. It depends what you're looking for, but I'll often be looking for how strategic the agency is. Like, are they really understanding the problem we're trying to solve? Might ask for client references or I might do my own like back channeling.

51:59
Janice Greenwald
That's how I got to Kat in the first place was through some bad. I've actually never worked with Kat. True story. But we've tried a few times. It just hasn't worked out. But certainly like talking to other people who have worked with the agencies is great. Maybe relevant category experience would be great and I love seeing a little passion for the project. But you know what, sometimes these Agencies are really busy, and I'm not going to completely, like, ding them if they don't give me anything custom in the rfp, if it's literally just the capabilities. But I really want to work with them. And I felt the chemistry on the call. Like, I might still say yes. That's why I try to weigh all these things.

52:30
Janice Greenwald
And then, of course, you're looking at the price and value and the project timeline and things like that, because. But it's. It's kind of a combination of everything.

52:37
Daniel Scharff
So just maybe. Last question as we wrap up here, Janice. When you think. When you're talking to brands and they're like, yeah, okay, they're working with you, and we. Great, we want to get a great agency on this. There are different tiers of agencies and budgets that may be available to you. Maybe you are a repeat founder, you raise a ton of money, you come in, you got 100k ready to spend on branding. You're going to get an epic design, epic agency. There are others who are like, they're really proud to be able to afford you, Janice. And they don't necessarily have that kind of budget now for the agency. They're trying to be scrappy. How do you think about the different options that they can consider at different levels and what is characteristic about those agencies at those levels?

53:14
Janice Greenwald
That's a hard question. I mean, in my. I've definitely seen brands be really successful with freelancers. I know a couple of brands where a co founder is a designer and they've done beautiful work. And one of them even asked me to look at their packaging and they're like, do we need an agency? And I was like, this work is really good. And I looked at it on the shelf and I was like, y', all. Y' all crushed it, you know, and so it's not to say you can't do it that way. I don't have, like, personally, like, necessarily, like, I find agencies just to have a broader, like, set of thinking. You're gonna have more than one designer working on the project. You're gonna have a strategist like you.

53:50
Janice Greenwald
It's a whole team of people thinking about your brand as opposed to just kind of one person who could get some stuck in their own work. So I prefer going the agency route if my client can afford it. But one thing I have done is I've sort of, like, pieced together my own agency. So this is like a scrappy way is I've hired like, one time, I hired three freelancers and I Gave them all the exact same project, and I told them all what I was going to do. I was very transparent throughout it. And they all, like, had a set budget to come up with just, like, the initial design concept. And then we chose one freelancer off of that, and then we actually chose a different freelancer to finish the mechanicals because he was cheaper. Like, that's how.

54:26
Janice Greenwald
That's how, like, detailed I was. And I was very, like, open throughout. Like, I'm going to use you to do the. To flesh out the design more, but I'm going to go back to this other guy to finish it off because he's a lot cheaper than you. So, like, I really had to piece it together that way, but I don't. I'm not as proud of that work as I am as some of the work that I've done with, like, really good agencies.

54:46
Daniel Scharff
I got you. You do what you got to do. The end of the day. Okay, cool. I'm going to wrap us up here, but I really want to thank both of you. And as we end here, do you mind each just sharing ways that people can kind of follow along with you or get in touch? Janice, you want to go first?

55:01
Janice Greenwald
Sure. You can find me on LinkedIn, Janice Greenwald or my website, Janice Greenwald dot com. I'm pretty responsive if you ever want to email me or anything.

55:09
Daniel Scharff
All right, Cap.

55:10
Kat Karpati
Pretty much the same. So cat carpet on LinkedIn. Easy to find. You can also find me through flockcreative.com and the contact information is there. Very happy to answer any questions and help merging brands out.

55:21
Daniel Scharff
All right, well, thank you for this brief overview of creative briefs. It's been quite lovely and informative, and I hope everybody feels really prepared to go in and start off with your freelancer or agency on the right foot with the right amount of info, and then you'll get the best result ever for sure. All right, thank you, everybody.

55:41
Janice Greenwald
Thank you for having us.

55:42
Kat Karpati
Thank you.

55:45
Daniel Scharff
All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. If you loved it, I would so appreciate it if you could leave us a review. You could do it right now. If you're an Apple podcast, you can scroll to the bottom of our Startup CPG podcast page and click on Write a review. Leave your company name in there. I will try to read it out. If you're in Spotify, you can click on about and then the star rating icon. If you. If you are a service provider that would like to appear on the Startup CPG podcast, you can email us at partnershipstartupcpg.com lastly, if you found yourself grooving along to the music, it is my band. You can visit our website and listen to more. It is superfantastics.com thank you everybody. See you next time. Sam.